Gallery of digital works

COMPUTER MANIPULATED PHOTOGRAPHY : computer aided photomontage

Note: what has come to be referred to as "digital art" is actually an analogue of art, making what is presented here  ANALOGUE ART.

photo-manipulation 2003

.... for a while I had been producing "digital" images ... tripped up by the strong flowing current of terminology spat out by a "digital" generation which has become unfamiliar with the process of physical creation. Alas though, these images are not digital per se. They are instead photo manipulations, montages, albeit, photomontages assembled on a computer rather than by hand. A photomontage created by hand is not "manual art" neither is a montage created on the computer itself "digital art".

.... Photography as an end in itself has been overrated. All one has to do is understand light, see a pattern or composition in what is already there, aim the camera and click a button. That does not mean there have not been some beautiful photographs taken... But how much of the credit should the photographer receive for something that was already there? Does framing something that is already before oneself, in which one has had no say in creating (say a nude or a landscape) constitute art? And, when all was said and done in photography what was left? the photographing of male genitalia by Mapplethorpe.... a demonstration of the absolute failure of photography to raise itself to any artistic or intellectual height. ...With the computer however, the photographer is no longer limited by framing what is already before one. Now the photographer can reframe the subject, reframe what they have photographed, in an altogether novel way. That makes the photographer an artist rather than a technician. For others though, the computer is no more than a means of concealing the paucity of their imagination, skill or intellect, concealed as it is by the use of 'filters' as if fudging the details can somehow make up for shortcomings.

Lautréamont, Isidore Ducasse, (born 1846, died 1870) predates surrealism by around a half a century, yet his influence was profound. His description of the strange beauty of the chance encounter of a sewing machine and umbrella on the dissecting table defined the principle of surrealism's quest in associating the disparate and incongruous. My computer manipulated photography is purely surreal. The juxtapositions just work. And, as distinct from my paintings (although many of my photo-juxtapositions are computer renditions of what I have already painted and drawn), these photo-montages make no statement. These are purely surreal images...

Immediately below are 4 of 13 such montages created from 14 February - 9 April 2003 ... which, incidentally, is about how long it would take me to complete one solitary oil-painting (3-4 days to stretch and prime the canvas allowing for drying time between coats of gesso; a week or so to draw the image onto the canvas; 5-6 weeks to paint):